It’s all becoming routine for Doubront

Tuesday

Jul 9, 2013 at 9:08 PM

SEATTLE — It was a common refrain from Felix Doubront last year, during his first full season as a major-league starter.Every outing I learn more, Doubront said in some form or other after many of his...

By TIM BRITTON

SEATTLE — It was a common refrain from Felix Doubront last year, during his first full season as a major-league starter.

Every outing I learn more, Doubront said in some form or other after many of his starts. It’s all a good learning experience.

Now in year two in the Boston rotation, how is Doubront applying those lessons?

“It’s a lot different. I know what to do in situations,” said Doubront. “You’re learning every outing, and you try to think of that when that happens the next outing. It’s the kind of mental game that you play.”

That education extends to days he’s not pitching. Doubront has spent a lot of this season pitching a day or two after fellow lefty Jon Lester, and he’s paid close attention to the way the veteran Lester goes about attacking opposing offenses. When he saw Lester quiet the Blue Jays with a lot of changeups in late June, Doubront made it a part of his game plan two days later.

It was about this time last season that Doubront started to struggle. After a solid first few months, Doubront saw his ERA jump from below four to over five from mid-June to mid-September. He feels he’s better equipped to handle the second half of the season this time around.

Part of that is a change in his five-day routine, which has coincided with his string of strong starts of late. Instead of throwing his bullpen session two days after a start, Doubront and pitching coach Juan Nieves have pushed it back to Day Three. Nieves said Doubront is fresher by then, meaning he can actually work on his arsenal between starts.

“It seems like he’s fresher and his body’s more suitable to work on his craft,” Nieves said. “That’s the only time you ever really have to work on your craft is between starts. It’s a very valuable time — however much time you put in.”

Nieves, Doubront and manager John Farrell have all said that having the bullpen session closer to Doubront’s next start than his last one has provided the left-hander with a better feel for his secondary pitches.

“Guys that rely on off-speed or secondary pitches, I think they benefit from the fact of feeling it as close as possible to game time — just because of the awareness of it, the feel of the hands, the visual and the physical,” said Nieves.

“Going to Day Three [has gotten] him a little closer with the touch and feel the day before,” Farrell said. “And it certainly paid off. Just the assortment of pitches. He has weapons to keep guys off stride.”

Doubront has clearly been more effective with some of his off-speed stuff in his last few outings. In his last six starts, Doubront has generated swing-and-misses on greater than 15 percent of his changeups, even as he’s throwing the pitch more frequently. (He didn’t use his change as much as 20 percent of the time in any single game until June 13 in Baltimore. He’s used it that often three times in the last five starts.)

Nieves thinks pushing Doubront’s bullpen session back has also sharpened his focus. Last season, Doubront posted ridiculous splits in which he shut down the opposition’s best hitters, only to see the bottom of the order tee off on him.

Those splits still exist, but Doubront has shown improvement of late. In his last four starts, No. 8 and No. 9 hitters are a combined 2-for-17. (They were hitting .375 off Doubront before that stretch.)

“We can cut down pitches and maybe have a game focus and game rhythm with a precise amount of pitches that we want to work on from the stretch and from the windup,” Nieves explained. “We go over the lineup, who we’re going to face the next time, a couple hitters.”